But in our apartment, time has stopped. There’s maybe something playing on HBO. Even it seems to unspool in slow motion.
Until the phone rings.
I’m not even aware I’ve answered it until the doctor’s voice is in my ear. “Lily came through surgery fine.” I dry heave my relief. “The myelogram revealed compression of the spinal cord over the tenth through twelfth thoracic vertebrae. We took her directly into surgery and performed a hemilaminectomy over this area.”
I’m nodding as if I understand exactly what this means. I’m nodding for someone who can’t see me, trying to listen but also play back in my head the confirmation that all this went fine. I try to repeat hemilaminectomy in my head and it sounds like a child trying to pronounce aluminum: alumi-numi-numi-num.
“Basically, we make an incision that creates a window into the vertebral bodies and exposes the spinal cord so we can retrieve the herniated disc material.” Retrieve it and do what with it? “Lily’s procedure went without complication and she recovered from the anesthesia uneventfully.”
Uneventfully. Like being put under and myelograms and spine windows and alumi-numi-numi-num surgeries are everyday phenomena in life.
“Is she able to … Was the surgery a success?”
I am suddenly aware that I’m standing, as if the doctor has walked into our living room. I have no memory of getting up, and now that I am up, I’m unsure of where to look or what to do with my hand that is not holding the phone. The news is what I want to hear, but somehow I’m ice-cold, the warmth of the vodka having drained out of my limbs.
“Animals that suffer this type of injury make most of their neurologic improvement over the first three months postoperatively. You’ll notice some immediate improvement, but don’t be discouraged if Lily’s progress is initially slow. But I’m cautiously optimistic.”
“Cautiously optimistic that …” There’s a hiccup of laughter from upstairs and I give a death-stare at the ceiling.
“Cautiously optimistic. That she will recover.”
“Fully?”
“Cautiously optimistic.”
Stop saying that. Will she walk?
“We need to board her here for the next seventy-two hours to monitor her initial recovery and watch for any signs of complications. Our offices are closed tomorrow for New Year’s Day, which means you can visit her the day after if you want to. But only briefly. It’s not good for her to get too excited. Otherwise, you can take her home the day after that.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“It was our pleasure working with Lily.”
She’s not getting what I’m trying to say.
“No.” I say it with import. “Thank you.”
I hang up the phone and collapse on the couch and relay to Jeffrey what I was told and when we can see her and when we can bring her home.
He looks at me, not quite knowing what to say. “I guess we have a wedding to attend.”
I’m Afraid There’s No Denyin’/I’m Just a Dandy-Lion
EIGHT TIMES I WAS COWARDLY
1 When I was five and my father told me to walk in a more masculine way and I was so immediately overcome with shame that I did.
2 That time in the seventh grade when this popular kid with a French last name called me a faggot and instead of standing up for myself I thought of how faggot would sound in French (fag-oh) while wishing for the floor to swallow me whole.
3 When my parents divorced and people asked me about it and I pretended I was glad.
4 When this guy in high school performed oral sex on me and I told him afterward that it was not a big deal because even though he might be gay, I was comfortable with my heterosexuality.
5 Deciding not to major in creative writing because I thought that the broader and blander “communications” was the safer degree.
6 When I ended one relationship by becoming so distant and cold that after months of trying to reach me and discover what was wrong, he was left with no choice but to break up with me.
7 When I didn’t immediately confront Jeffrey about the text message I’d seen.
8 Every time I don’t tell my mother that I love her because I’m afraid she won’t say it back.
AND ONE TIME I HAD COURAGE
1 When I left Los Angeles for my sister’s wedding, leaving Lily behind, boarded, in recovery, trusting her to heal.
The Tonga Room and Hurricane Bar
I watch the low morning sun glimmer off the water as we take off over the Pacific; it’s a short flight to San Francisco and we’re still getting in on New Year’s Day as planned. I ask the flight attendant for a ginger ale to pop an old pill I found in the bathroom drawer (which I’m hoping is Valium, but is probably Vicodin), otherwise I don’t say a word. I’m grateful for my window seat. Normally I’m stuck in the middle, as Jeffrey refuses to sit anywhere but the aisle, but the flight to San Francisco is a smaller plane with only two seats in each row on either side of the walkway. If nothing else, I can stare out at the view below and not have to make eye contact with anyone. Eye contact is dangerous. Eye contact is a trigger.
When we land and I’m able to turn on my phone, I have two missed calls. The first is from Meredith, to see if we made our flight, and the second is the animal hospital calling to say that Lily has made it through the night and continues to exhibit good vitals. I listen to the second message four times for any hint that they are lying to me or glossing over an unpleasant truth, but I can’t glean anything untoward and I end up not calling them back.
Meredith is waiting for us at baggage claim. She greets me with a hug, which I collapse into.
“You okay?” she whispers in my ear.
“Okay adjacent.” I can be matter-of-fact with her, even today. We’re only eighteen months apart, and while I sometimes joke that my first eighteen months were the best of my life, it’s just that—a joke. “Did you call Mom?”
“We’re eloping. Okay? If we invited everyone and made a big to-do it would be a wedding.”
I don’t know why there’s a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach about this, but there is. Is Mom “everyone”? I tend to obsess over the ways in which our mother is like every other mother—and all of the ways that she isn’t. “Okay.” It’s Meredith’s decision.
“But I’m glad you’re here!”
She and Franklin and Jeffrey and I manage lunch at a noodle house in Chinatown and check into our room at the Fairmont Hotel before I can’t hold it inside any longer.
“I. Need. A. Drink.”
It’s almost five o’clock (if the give-or-take is three hours), and so we head down to the bar in the lobby. Some asshole is playing annoyingly plinky ragtime on a grand piano, but my aggravation doesn’t trump my thirst so I order a double vodka on the rocks. Meredith agrees to an impromptu bachelorette party, partly at my urging (a bachelorette party sounds like a good excuse to drink), as long as she doesn’t have to wear a tiara or carry a penis whistle or anything like that. I apologize to Franklin (he’s not invited) and I call my friend Aaron, who now lives in San Francisco and who Meredith knows from years ago when we all lived in Maine. He agrees to join us for the revelry. Three gay men and a bride.
When Aaron arrives he’s as handsome as ever (for some reason this is comforting—the beauty in life) and I fill him in on the Lily situation and the impromptu nature of both the wedding and this makeshift party.
“We all need some celebration and some fun,” I say. The lobby bar is not fun.
“I know where we need to go,” Aaron says, and he leads us to the elevator.
“We’re already on the ground floor,” Meredith offers. “The front door is that way.”
“Shhh.” He winks, taking Meredith’s hand. “You and me—and I think they’ll agree—are going down to the terrace level to take up residence in the Tonga Room and Hurricane Bar for tropical storms and Singapore slings.”
Was that a poem? I wonder. It feels like he’s using words from another language that I usually sp
eak, but that now sounds foreign thanks to the double vodka and emotional exhaustion.
When the elevator dings, Aaron corrals us inside and presses the button for the terrace level, and the car lurches and our stomachs dip as we head down.
The Tonga Room is squarely underneath the Fairmont Hotel, and the Hurricane Bar is a Polynesian-themed marvel situated around what must once have been the hotel’s swimming pool but is now a lagoon, complete with a rain forest–style thunderstorm every half hour. A barge floats on the lagoon, carrying a band that plays in between storms. The cane-and-rattan furniture and the tiki lights make it a tropical, tacky mess.
In short, it’s perfect.
“Singapore slings for everyone!” I say.
Waiting for our drinks, I fidget endlessly with my phone as if the animal hospital will call. The battery is at 35 percent and I have only one bar of reception. It dawns on me that it’s still New Year’s Day and the hospital is closed except for emergencies and they’re only going to call if something is drastically wrong, but it’s only after Aaron eases the phone out of my hand and sets it upside-down on the table that I really understand that I don’t want them to call. No news, it’s true, is good news.
The cocktail waitress arrives, expertly balancing a tray with our four Singapore slings—gin concoctions the color of a tropical sunset, topped with a pineapple wedge, two Maraschino cherries, and a paper umbrella. Before we can even take our first sip, I look at the waitress and exclaim, “Four more slings!” like I’m at a presidential reelection rally clamoring for another term. Meredith starts to protest, but I cut her off. “It’s either that, or a penis whistle and I tell everyone on that barge that you’re getting married tomorrow.”
Meredith nods her understanding, then confirms my order with the server. “Another round, please.”
The server smiles at my sister with sympathy and whispers, “Congratulations.”
As we drink our first slings, we grill Meredith about the wedding. Who proposed, when, and why elope. We do our best to make her the center of attention. While she’s not consumed with bridehood, it is still her occasion, her day and not mine.
“Remember when you were six and got your head stuck in the back slats of a park bench and Mom freaked out and called the fire department?”
“What?” Jeffrey asks.
“You’ve never heard this? Turns out she could just crawl out the way she crawled in, but for some reason refused until two firemen pulled her out screaming.”
“Why firemen?” Jeffrey asks. “Where was your father?”
“Working,” I say. “He was always working.”
Meredith smiles and turns the color of her drink. “What made you think of that?”
I don’t know what made me think of that. “Are you stuck?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
“What? What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know.” I whisper, “Pregnant?”
Meredith nearly chokes on her drink. “I’m stuck here with you drinking this, which is like grain alcohol or something. I had better not be pregnant.”
“Oh, relax,” I say, and Meredith kicks me under the table, hard, like we used to do when we were kids and ordered by our parents to be quiet. I scrunch my face at her, signaling that she will get hers in return, and she laughs again. Aaron and Jeffrey ask something about her dress.
“What about Franklin being Chinese?” I blurt.
“What about it?”
“I don’t know.” I’m trying to stay involved, pull my thoughts away from Lily, to be in the moment. “What about kids? Does it change anything about how you will raise them?”
“Of course not. It mostly just means I can never wear heels.” Meredith has always been self-conscious about her height.
As we drink our second slings, we press Aaron about single gay life in San Francisco and remain tuned to his every word like he’s a telenovela—his stories are outlandish and addicting and we understand most of what’s going on even if the concepts are a little foreign for the rest of us in longer-term relationships.
“You mean people just do that in the streets?” Jeffrey interrupts when Aaron is in the middle of a story about the Folsom Street Fair.
“What do you mean, naked?” I add. “Naked, naked?”
“What are chaps?” Poor Meredith.
By the third round of slings, we know what we’re doing. We dispense with the pineapple and the cherries and the umbrellas and get down to the business of gin. Two rainstorms have showered the lagoon and we’re due for a third, and the band on the barge has paddled by us several times playing what they bill as Top 40 hits, but which are certainly not the current Top 40 hits unless Kool & the Gang have made some recent cultural resurgence I’m not aware of. Some straight couples dance on the barge, but I’m not sure how they boarded or if they’re even supposed to be there.
The conversation turns to Lily, and Meredith and Aaron ask questions and I let Jeffrey answer as I lower my head to my glass and chew on my straw. After a few minutes, my straw mangled beyond any ability to do its job, I finally speak.
“When Lily was a year old she ate an entire bag of wasabi peas.” I laugh at the ridiculousness of that sentence, but no one else does. “She’d once eaten a bag of chocolate-covered blueberries that someone had given me as a gift, so I had been down this road before. Since chocolate is toxic for dogs, I called the vet and they suggested giving her some hydrogen peroxide as a way to induce vomiting—one teaspoon for every ten pounds of body weight, so one and a half teaspoons for Lily. Pretty effective stuff. To this day I don’t know if wasabi peas are toxic to dogs, but to be on the safe side, I decided to pull out the old hydrogen peroxide. Only this time she was wise to the trick and wanted no part of it. So I grabbed her by the snout and pried open her jaw. At the last second she zigged left and I zagged right and the peroxide ended up going down the wrong pipe. So not only did she not throw up, but now in addition to wasabi peas burning her stomach she had hydrogen peroxide burning her windpipe, and she couldn’t breathe without a horrible wheezing sound. I rushed her to the animal clinic, and a few hours later it was as if the whole thing hadn’t happened, but I remember thinking I was going to lose her.” I remember how much I hated myself that night, how I felt like a total failure if I couldn’t keep her alive for more than a year.
Somewhere in my speech the rain over the lagoon had started again, and the patter of rain on water sounds like a gentle snare drum. I pause and take the disfigured straw out of my glass and replace it with another straw from an empty glass. I don’t even know whose empty it was, nor do I care. “I don’t know what made me think of that.”
But I do know. I hate myself again, much as I did that night. Living things, maybe not barnacles or plants (although plants technically do bend their leaves toward the sun), need to move. And under my watch Lily was unable to retain what she was born with—the ability to move herself about. Even if it was an accident, or an injury that was breed-specific—just one of those things—it was my fault, just as every unpleasant thing that happened to her was a failure of mine to keep her safe.
On the table, hidden behind a standing cocktail menu, is a bowl of snack mix. I stick my finger in it and swirl the crunchy items around, taking a sort of inventory to see if there are any wasabi peas.
There aren’t.
“Ow!” The kick comes swiftly under the table and I jump and the cocktail glasses rattle. I look across at Meredith, who is grinning broadly.
Enough with the self-pity.
“You’re in trouble now,” I say to Meredith.
“What did I do?” she says, feigning innocence while failing to stifle laughter.
I grab as many of them as I can by the elbows and pull them away from the table. “Let’s dance!”
The rain stops and the barge sets sail again, this time with us aboard, and I’m already waving my hands in the air doing some sort of rhythmic snapping thing when the band starts to play “You Make My D
reams” by Hall & Oates.
The Vow
I’m not entirely sure what Franklin’s Chinese parents think of their son marrying a tall white woman, but I’m pretty sure what they don’t think the occasion needs is two six-foot-plus homosexuals. Still, they nod and smile and do their best to make polite conversation, and the judge who officiates turns out to be Chinese and that seems to go a long way toward making the whole thing more palatable.
San Francisco City Hall is a stunning feat of marble, ambition, and architectural chutzpah; a Beaux-Arts monument to government as beautiful as any cathedral. After Meredith and Franklin get their marriage license, we wait in the cavernous entryway at the base of the grand staircase for their turn to get hitched. The floor’s marble inlay consists of circles and squares and I trace them awkwardly with my foot. Meredith looks stunning in a simple cream-colored backless wedding dress from J. Crew. It’s perfect for both her body and her temperament. My sister is not someone whose wedding I ever imagined. She’s not the kind of girl who grew up daydreaming of one, or playing bride in any fashion. But now that I see her looking radiant in this backless cream number against the ornate-but-not-ostentatious backdrop of city hall, I can’t imagine it any other way.
When it’s their turn, we climb the grand marble staircase, Meredith and Franklin first, Jeffrey and me and Franklin’s parents silently behind them. I look up at the dome. It’s supposedly the fifth largest in the world and it’s a marvel to behold. At the top of the stairs we stand in a rotunda in front of two double doors. Behind them are the mayor’s offices, where San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and supervisor and gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk were assassinated by a former colleague in 1978. I shudder when I remember this. The location seems solemn, but important.
The ceremony is simple, Meredith and Franklin holding hands in front of the judge, exchanging rings and vows. I try to manage being a combination of witness, photographer, family of the bride, and maid of honor. I take out my digital camera and snap as many pictures as I can without feeling disruptive, knowing the rest of my family will want to see them. I do everything I can to be present, even if my mind is 381 miles away.
Lily and the Octopus Page 6